Sorry, bunny. No room at the inn.
So a few weeks ago I read this book about FDR and the New Deal - Nothing to Fear: FDR's Inner Circle and the Hundred Days That Created Modern America* - which was a really interesting and pretty much what it says on the tin. It's a profile of FDR's closest advisors, including both members of the "bedside cabinet" and the actual official cabinet, and a look at all the incredible things they got done in the first three months of FDR's presidency in terms of turning the country around.
It left me wanting a more ground-level view, something about the actual people who actually were helped by alphabet soup agencies and programs, people who went from struggling to survive to making a living wage because FDR hustled a program through Congress in three days. So now I'm reading Devil's Lake, Wisconsin, and the Civilian Conservation Corps, about a specific local-ish camp where the CCC did a lot of work, and about the young men who worked there.
...So, you know. Obviously I am reading along through the explanation of the organizational structure of the camp and automatically mentally assigning everybody's roles for the Civilian Conservation Corps GK AU. Encino Man = the camp's military commander. Nate = the junior officer assisting him. Brad, Pappy, Lovell = enrollee leaders, who are so much like sergeants that they GET TO WEAR CHEVRONS ON THEIR CCC DRESS UNIFORMS. Doc is the enrollee orderly who does first aid and watches grumpily over you if you get sick enough not to work; the battalion surgeon guy is the actual contract doctor, away in town but reachable for emergencies.
And then, you see, each camp had an educational advisor, the guy who offers classes and tries to make sure all the enrollees have at least learned to read and write by the time they leave the CCC. He's the only non-military grownup at the camp, and according to the book this made him a "frequent confidant" of the enrollees, by which I assume they mean "the safest person to tell if you have a crush on your bunkmate/enrollee leader/Army lieutenant who is basically running the place because the Captain is totally useless/etc." So clearly: Evan.
And they all build a state park together, and then a few years later they meet up again and go fight Nazis! The end!
*That ACTUALLY IS why America is the way it is today!
This entry was originally posted at http://dira.dreamwidth.org/606992.html. There are currently
comments there.
It left me wanting a more ground-level view, something about the actual people who actually were helped by alphabet soup agencies and programs, people who went from struggling to survive to making a living wage because FDR hustled a program through Congress in three days. So now I'm reading Devil's Lake, Wisconsin, and the Civilian Conservation Corps, about a specific local-ish camp where the CCC did a lot of work, and about the young men who worked there.
...So, you know. Obviously I am reading along through the explanation of the organizational structure of the camp and automatically mentally assigning everybody's roles for the Civilian Conservation Corps GK AU. Encino Man = the camp's military commander. Nate = the junior officer assisting him. Brad, Pappy, Lovell = enrollee leaders, who are so much like sergeants that they GET TO WEAR CHEVRONS ON THEIR CCC DRESS UNIFORMS. Doc is the enrollee orderly who does first aid and watches grumpily over you if you get sick enough not to work; the battalion surgeon guy is the actual contract doctor, away in town but reachable for emergencies.
And then, you see, each camp had an educational advisor, the guy who offers classes and tries to make sure all the enrollees have at least learned to read and write by the time they leave the CCC. He's the only non-military grownup at the camp, and according to the book this made him a "frequent confidant" of the enrollees, by which I assume they mean "the safest person to tell if you have a crush on your bunkmate/enrollee leader/Army lieutenant who is basically running the place because the Captain is totally useless/etc." So clearly: Evan.
And they all build a state park together, and then a few years later they meet up again and go fight Nazis! The end!
*That ACTUALLY IS why America is the way it is today!
This entry was originally posted at http://dira.dreamwidth.org/606992.html. There are currently
comments there.